Support Structures, Detritus, & Sirens


Precious Bryant sprained her ankle but was able to sing. All will now be taken care of. Welfare cheques and so forth. Petal & precious reliance. Performance is therefore possible. He is laughing on the stretcher in the photograph. We ran for a stretcher, I remember, when the boy fell on the Assault Course, & we thought he had broken his ankle. The truffle hunters of Regione Marche are careful not to damage the find. The private detective, however, is non functional, by trope & exposure & cannot continue the search. There are no sirens today. The smell is probably dead vermin under the floorboards — here & in the flat from which she paints the panorama of the village. Winter & repairs find us camped on the fault line, clearing old fibres — like sandpaper on throat & hands. Vast field of fibreglass & asbestos. Artist’s detritus. Eva Hesse. Industrial accidents. Robert Belfour from the hill country, out of Memphis, limping, but Delta sinew in his ‘Black Mattie’. Outsider blues. Potent focus, but maybe I missed a maverick trick in this muttering refuse. Cutting the meat he told me of his first journey as a child, overland from Turkey to the UK, when Austria was the country that made the biggest impression with its mountains & flowers. At the same age I had been similarly captivated, but returning a quarter of a century later had found a hint of kitsch in the hills, preferring harsher wildernesses to the south. Now he flies direct to Istanbul. Stretcher-bearers, freelance carers, baggage handlers; sift the detritus, arrange bookings, connections, safety net. The singers travel light.